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What We've Found
Julia Harte with your morning fix.
Ex-Mayor Street's mostly unsuccessful initiative to transform neighborhoods by demolishing derelict buildings and constructing new homes failed to make payments and timely reports on its progress, according to a new audit, whose authors warned that the city may owe the IRS millions of dollars in penalties.
Government corruption in Afghanistan threatens to thwart the U.S. army's efforts there no matter how many more soldiers the government adds, Army General Stanley McChrystal wrote in a still-secret request for between 10,000 to 80,000 extra troops.
Iraqi schoolchildren were starting school and reading textbooks that have replaced long sections of accolades about Saddam Hussein with more realistic descriptions of his regime, including Hussein's oppression of the country's Shiite and Kurdish minorities.
Saudi negotiators were declaring that wealthy countries would be obliged to assist oil-producing countries with economic diversification if they reduce their oil consumption to combat climate change.
Hybrid auto companies were working with Hollywood special-effects producers to create fake motor sounds that the notoriously silent vehicles will emit out of their bumpers to warn pedestrians of their approach.
Philadelphia's Clean Air Council opened a new hotline that people can call to report trucks and buses that are idling their motors for more than the legal limit of five minutes.
Julia Harte with your morning fix.
A Colorado insurance company that denied coverage to a 17-lb, 4-month-old baby on the grounds that he was "too fat" changed its mind after the story made national headlines over the weekend.
To protest an Internet video of Burlington schoolchildren singing songs in praise of Obama, 70 people stood outside the children's school yesterday chanting "Education not indoctrination!" and "Free children, free minds!"
Preliminary data indicates that teachers have benefited the most from the $787 billion stimulus package issued earlier this year, state officials around the country reported. In most states, teaching jobs represented two-thirds to three-quarters of all jobs saved by the funding.
Teachers in the eastern Pennsylvania district of Saucon Valley were planning to strike this week after working without a contract for more than a year.
AlliedBarton security guards at the Philadelphia Museum of Art voted to join the Philadelphia Security Officers Union. Not since the 1990s, when Art Museum guards were city employees, has that workforce been unionized.
Unionized electric workers were furious and planning a massive protest on Thursday to protest Mexican president Felipe Calderon's closure of a state-run energy distribution firm, which resulted in at least 40,000 layoffs.
Julia Harte with your mid-morning fix.
The U.S. Supreme Court was debating whether a cross erected in the Mojave National Preserve to honor fallen soldiers violated the First Amendment's ban on governmental establishment of religion.
A Northeast Philadelphia couple was on trial for attempting to faith-heal their two-year-old son rather than seek medical treatment. The boy died of bacterial pneumonia in January.
France's Culture Minister, Frederic Mitterand, was facing intense pressure to resign over his defense of Roman Polanski as well as an autobiography in which Mitterand stated that "the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys" in Thailand "put me in a state of desire."
A new study suggested that the birth control pill, by suppressing hormone levels, has made women more likely to seek a responsible, long-term mate rather than lusting after the men with most sex appeal.
More than 600 Jane Austen fans were preparing to descend on Philadelphia for the the 31st-annual general meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America.
The German author Herta Mueller, whose novels and stories about political alienation have been periodically censored in her birthland of Romania, won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Julia Harte with your mid-morning fix.
Nine Philadelphia men, members of the Pagans outlaw motorcycle gang, were arrested along with more than 40 members in other states after the unsealing of a nationwide racketeering indictment.
Microsoft was being investigated by a European Union competition commission to ensure that the software giant is allowing its customers to run web browsers made by rival companies on its operating systems.
Defense contractors are often negligent, subject to little oversight and irresponsibly compensated, according to a new investigation by the Associated Press. Auditors for the Defense Department found that independent military contractors have received as much as $6 billion from the U.S. government in payments of questionable cause.
Philadelphia's Board of Revision of Taxes will be replaced by an independent entity that will no longer set property values or be permitted to exhibit personal and political favoritism, Mayor Nutter announced.
China's efforts to clean up its energy sector were paying off, according to a report from the International Energy Agency, and the nation will be at the forefront of the fight against climate change if it achieves its predicted savings.
Apple is the most recent company to quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest of the Chamber's climate policy, especially its opposition to regulating greenhouse gases and implementing a cap and trade bill.
Julia Harte with your morning fix.
The latest victim in a spate of random cruelty against Philadelphia-area felines, a six-week-old kitten in Chester, died at the vet from injuries sustained while being set on fire and stoned.
A Saylorsburg, PA woman was mauled to death by her 350-lb pet black bear, Teddy, whom she had raised from cubhood in a secluded menagerie that also contained an African lion, cougar, jaguar, tiger and leopard.
Counterterrorism experts were alarmed by the news that an al-Qaeda suicide bomber was able to ingest an explosive, pass through airport security and fly to Saudi Arabia, where he detonated after a signal from his cell phone. Though the target was not killed, the incident was a striking example of the innovative terror technology being developed by al-Qaeda.
More Americans die prematurely from preventable causes -- illnesses such as diabetes, epilepsy, stroke, influenza, ulcers and pneumonia -- than almost any other industrialized nation, according to new research from the Commonwealth Fund.
A tree estimated to be over 600 years old was chopped down in its Queens neighborhood after a tree expert warned that rot had made the 70-foot-tall, 100-foot-wide colossus liable to fall over.
The new building that will house the Barnes collection of impressionist and early modern art will be a "gracious, golden-hued temple - contemporary in style," according to the Philadelphia Inquirer's architecture critic Inga Saffron. It will include the typical museum spaces that the collection doesn't have at its Merion site, such as a special-exhibits gallery, café and support spaces.
Julia Harte with your morning fix.
The U.S. Supreme Court was preparing to take on a Western Pennsylvania case against a man convicted but later acquitted of unlawful cruelty to animals in his dogfighting videos.
Bereaved female macaque monkeys in Morocco were observed to drink their own milk, possibly to relieve stress or boost their immune systems. One macaque self-suckled for 106 straight days after her infant died.
Iraqi tribal leaders who helped the U.S. army fight insurgents were feeling abandoned after the abrupt departure of American troops from Anbar province, complaining that U.S. soldiers didn't even say goodbye and that the British were better occupiers.
Eight U.S. troops and three Afghan soldiers were killed over the weekend in the densely forested Afghan province of Nuristan: one of the deadliest attacks yet launched against an American base in the country.
Afraid he'd be arrested for dropping a one-ton bomb on a densely populated area of Gaza in 2002 to kill a single militant, Israeli minister and foreign military chief Moshe Yaalon canceled a visit to the United Kingdom.
A Philadelphia man brought a 32-year-old live shell into a police station on Saturday to dispose of it but failed to call ahead, causing the station to briefly evacuate and call in the city's Bomb Squad.
Julia Harte with your mid-morning fix.
Children who eat sweets every day are significantly more likely to be convicted of a violent crime by age 34, researchers at Cardiff University have found.
An army reservist who stabbed a stranger in broad daylight over the weekend committed suicide by electrocuting himself in a West Philadelphia bath. In his suicide note, he wrote, "I hope this shows that the system is not built to fix a person."
A prisoner was exonerated by DNA evidence after spending more than 27 years in prison -- the longest sentence that any ultimately-exonerated inmate has served.
Paleontologists found a fossil skeleton of a hominid 1.2 million years older than Lucy, making it the oldest human specimen yet.
A 90-year-old Spanish-style mansion near Bryn Mawr, the historic La Ronda estate, was demolished today to make room for a new 10,000-square-foot house.
Housing activity in the United States was up 5 percent in August, boosting a 0.8 percent increase in construction spending, according to new figures from the Commerce Department.
Julia Harte with your mid-morning fix.
Two drug smugglers passed a combined $21,500 worth (1.5 lbs) of hashish at local hospitals after being taken into custody at Philadelphia International Airport.
Kenyan authorities seized $10 million worth (1,500 lbs) of ivory in a nighttime raid at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta Airport, where the trafficked tusks were reportedly en route to Thailand.
Vietnam was flooded in the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana, a tsunami had killed at least 89 people in the Samoan islands, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake trapped thousands of Sumatrans under rubble, and India was facing its worst drought since 1972.
Adapting to the effects of climate change will cost developing countries about $100 billion each year beginning in 2010, a new World Bank study warned. But a study from the International Institute for Environment and Development one month earlier indicated that developing countries would have to use at least twice that amount to ensure climate safety.
4 out of every 5 child-safety seats inspected by Pennsylvania police in a statewide check earlier this month were not properly installed.
A two-day summit in Washington, D.C., tackled the problem of drivers distracted by their cellphones. Studies have found that dialing a cell phone and using or reaching for an electronic device increased risk of collision about six times in cars and trucks.
Julia Harte with your morning fix.
Guinean troops reportedly raped, beat and shot hundreds of civilians demonstrating over rumors that the head of the country's military junta would run for president in January. Over a hundred were killed.
Protestors at the G20 conference in Pittsburgh accused the city's police force of issuing unclear dispersal orders, firing rubber bullets at compliant individuals and seizing journalistic footage during the nearly 200 arrests made outside the economic summit on Thursday and Friday.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that other countries may soon rival the United States in economic might, as currencies such as the Chinese renminbi and the euro threaten to replace the dollar as the predominant reserve currency.
The Pennsylvania poverty rate increased to 12.1 percent from 11.6 percent and the percentage of households receiving food stamps went up by three percentage points between 2007 and 2008, according to new census data. Pennsylvania was one of only seven states that reported an increase in poverty during the period.
Kiosks in San Francisco International Airport now collect money from passengers who wish to offset the carbon emitted from their flight. Their money goes to such nonprofits as Conservation Fund, which allows trees in a forest it owns to grow taller so they can trap more carbon dioxide.
Harvard Medical School hosted a conference devoted to pharmaceuticals and lifestyles that prolong youthfulness and may extend life.
The Chinese paddlefish, a freshwater fish that can grow up to 21 feet in length, was feared extinct by ichthyologists after a three-year search for the species failed to find any individuals.
Julia Harte with your morning fix.
The streets and vacant lots of Kensington were plagued by swarms of speeding ATV riders, whom local residents were afraid to confront for fear of violent retribution.
Federal agencies rarely agree on who qualifies as a terrorist any more, according to a new study from Syracuse University that found U.S. attorneys have dropped three-quarters of the terrorism cases referred to them by federal investigators.
Southeast Asians in Britain who wanted to off family members or business colleagues were outsourcing the murders to India, where the victims are lured and then killed by local goons.
To protest toxic runoff from natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, which threatens to contaminate the drinking water of Philadelphia, Pennsylvanians were putting spikes in roads and taking down street signs so truck drivers wouldn't be able to access drilling sites.
Gallons of crude oil were continuing to flow into the reef-rich Timor Sea off Australia's coast from a Thai oil well that has been broken and since August 21, and probably won't be fixed for another three weeks.
Banks and insurance companies aren't the only institutions where executive pay has risen since the crash. CEOs at many nonprofits earned more than half a million dollars last year, with a median pay raise of 7 percent, according to a new study by The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
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